With news that Battleborn is going offline questions have been raised over just why Battleborn's servers are being shut down, especially as Gearbox hasn't talked much about the reason behind the shutting off for a while.
The Reason Behind The Battleborn Server Shutdown
Battleborn's servers are being shut down because after the game's release in May 2016 it failed to maintain a high playerbase and gain a solid audience.
After a few months, the game was barely being played on all platforms leading to issues finding other players to play with, in both co-op and PvP.
Since then the game was released in free-to-play form, but it still failed to capture an audience and has been sat in the background for months, barely being touched.
As with all online games, servers need to be maintained to ensure that people can play together. However, Battleborn was an online-only game, which means even if you wanted to play alone, solo, you needed to be connected to the internet.
This means that once the servers are turned off on January 25th the game will be unplayable completely, rendering physical copies of the game useless and the game will stop being available digitally.
Back on February 24, 2020, the game's virtual currency "Platinum" was no longer up for sale and any purchases will need to be made before the shutdown date in order to use the currency you have.
Battleborn has a long and storied history which never quite reached the potential that was initially set out by Gearbox.
The game was fairly poorly received when it first released and is currently sitting at a 69 on Metacritic with most reviews highlighting the lack of content and small issues which don't quite allow the game to stand out.
At the time dozens of hero shooters were coming out every year and Overwatch released shortly after this game, meaning that the genre was being heavily saturated and it is clear based on critical reception and commercial success that Battleborn never did enough to stand out.